


promise

by tsunderestorm



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 18:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6669793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nea pays Allen a brief visit in his dream world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	promise

**Author's Note:**

> another tumblr prompt request fill, with " _I was never just your friend_ " and " _I'm sorry, I shouldn't have kissed you_ ". I had fun with this, because it's not something I would have written otherwise.

He loses track of him in the end: in a maze of city streets with blood-slick cobblestone pathways Nea is nowhere to be found. He thinks he can hear him; can feel the fierce determination in his traitor's soul, hear the vibrations in the tense air when he slices the sword through bodies, flesh and bone cleaved apart like butter.

When Allen finds him, he's covered in blood. Some of it is his enemies'. Most of it isn't.

"I'll protect your memory," he promises, red hair turning into shining fire in the setting sun. "As long as it takes."

Nea laughs, or at least he tries to. His chest is rising and falling slowly, inhaling shaky, labored breaths. Allen can tell a lung is punctured, on the verge of collapse, a fragile sack held in place by a splintered cage meant to protect it, turned into its undoing. When he coughs, blood coats the fabric of his necktie, stark liquid red against the pale pattern.

"You turned out to be the best friend Mana and I could ever have."

“Nea,” Allen says softly. His eyes are red-rimmed behind the lenses of his glasses, teary and shining. “You were never just my friend.”

  
\--

Allen feels like he’s been walking for hours. This dream world is stale, stagnant; the breeze that had lifted the hair off the nape of his neck and sent the wheat fields whispering is gone, giving way to dry doldrums. He can’t tell if the clouds in the sky are moving and it hurts to look at them, eyes blinded by the sun. The mansion looms in the distance, always so far, always out of reach. He’s walking in circles. The tree is shade, at least, though its branches look dead, withered, scary - he crouches down under it, puts his head in his hands and wishes Cross had stayed longer. He might be a stupid bastard, but at least he was _someone_.

He appears in front of him in the blink of an eye - one minute there is nothing but wheat fields as far as the eye can see, in the next there is Nea invading his field of vision. _Is this an illusion, too?_ He’s too close. There’s an oppressive, choking power radiating from him; something cloying, _heavy_. Allen falls backwards, scooting away until he hits a raised tree root, wincing and rubbing the already-growing bruise beneath his clothes.

“You look different,” Nea comments plainly as he walks towards him and squats down, the hem of his coat pooling on the ground around him. “Last time, you had red hair.”

Nea kisses him full on the mouth and Allen’s lips feel bruised, raw. He doesn’t know what to say or what to do, how to respond except for his eyes to widen in shock, then close in something close to ecstasy. The kiss is gentle, and Nea’s hand at the back of his neck is more patient than he would have expected but there’s something _off_ about it - his tongue tastes like danger and deceit and even scarier than those, like something familiar, from a different life.

“I’m sorry,” Nea laughs quietly, calmly, a grin gracing his handsome face. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.” He stands up and walks a few steps, shading his brow and glancing up at the tops of the tree so high they look like they could kiss the sunlit sky.

Allen swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand and scowls, jumping to his feet and following him. “What’s your problem?” _How is it possible to feel lightheaded and so heavy at the same time?_

Nea picks at a piece of loose bark on the tree, dislodging it and crushing a fleeing ant as it falls. “You’re peculiar,” he comments pleasantly. “I heard what Cross said to you. He said it so poetically - ‘disappear’.”

He glances over his shoulder at Allen and winks. “He was right, though. Here is where you end, and I begin again.”

He turns back towards him and reaches out, cradling Allen’s jaw in his palm. “Oh, Allen. How is there any fight left in you?”

“If you think you’re taking my body without a fight - “ Allen threatens, knocking Nea’s arm away from him and balling his hands into fists. He feels naked and stupid, helpless in a way he hasn’t felt in years and _he doesn’t like it_. His Innocence doesn’t seem to work, here - normally he can feel the thrum of power (especially around a Noah) but his left arm feels like dead weight again. A pity, when he’d love to punch Nea’s smirking face and make him stop talking in riddles.

“You’re a puppet of destruction,” Nea repeats and Allen feels his blood freeze in his veins. It’s just the like the time that Nea appeared and Allen can feel the cold steel of the chains choking his neck. “A doomed puppet, but a pretty one.”

Allen turns to walk away. He doesn’t know if Nea is planning something - some hostile takeover, here, where he’s weakest, or if he’s just lost his goddamn mind, but he’s tired of listening. He’s walked a few feet when Nea’s voice rises over the sound of his own footsteps and Allen turns at the mention of a familiar name.

“Mana and I played here,” Nea says quietly, surveying the landscape with an expression Allen can’t quite decipher. “It’s lovely, isn’t it? Once, he fell out of that tree and broke his arm, had to lay in bed for weeks. The bone poked through the flesh. He was so...fragile. He needed me. More than he needed you.”

Allen could kill him. He doesn’t care if Nea was Mana’s brother, doesn’t care what he does, who he knows; he wants Mana’s name off of that traitor’s tongue.

“Don’t say that!"  
  


When he approaches him Nea moves his hands from inside his coat pockets and greets him with open arms to pull him into another kiss, mouth tender as ripe fruit.  
  


“Make no mistake, Allen Walker,” he says, lips inches from Allen’s. “This time, I won’t get killed halfway through. I had a promise to Mana first, and you promised to help me.”

 


End file.
